“Almost every school has a flagpole, and, while some are fastened to the
building itself, like the one at Foxes Corners, many stand free and are
planted in the yard. However, there is one old tree at your school and I
will ask Jacob to build you a lunch-counter, if you will promise to see
that it is kept well filled with provisions.
“This is the way it should be made: Around the pole a square or circular
shelf about eight inches wide can be fastened, four feet from the
ground, and edged with a strip of beading, barrel hoops, or the like. A
dozen tenpenny nails should be driven on the outside edge at intervals,
like the spokes to a wheel, and the whole neatly painted to match the
pole.
“Then each week we will ask Miss Wilde to appoint a child as _Bird
Steward_, his or her duties being to collect the scraps after the noon
dinner-hour and place them neatly on the counter, the crusts and crumbs
on the shelf and the meat to be hung on the spikes.
“Nothing will come amiss—pine cones, beechnuts, the shells of
hard-boiled eggs broken fine, apple cores, half-cleaned nuts; and if the
children will tell their parents of the counter, they will often put an
extra scrap or so in the dinner pail to help the feast. Or the fortunate
children whose fathers keep the market, the grocery store, or the mill,
may be able to obtain enough of the wastage to leave an extra supply on
Friday, so that the pensioners need not go hungry over Sunday.
“All the while the flag will wave gayly above little Citizen Bird, as
under its protection he feeds upon his human brothers’ bounty.
“Here is the story of one of these lunch-counters that proved a success.
It was written to encourage others, and I will read it so that you may
know that bird lunch-counters belong to real and not to fairy-tales.”